Tubstout's page

I will most likely implement this change with Kaklatath. There's a lot of Book 4 that just doesn't jive very well with me tonally (and there's another campaign the same players are in that most of book 4 would seem more fitting. It might cause some crossed wires, "wouldn't this fit better in your other game...?" if that makes sense).

I was definitely planning on Weiralai being a fun recurring villain. The group really enjoys Leng (we also played another AP that had a connection/references to Leng so they got really excited for more of that here)!

I'm almost assuredly going to swap out the end boss. The players didn't really put a lot of stock into Briarstone Witch during book 2 and focused more on other things.

I'd really like to have a wild divergence into earth and running a series of sessions in Call of Cthulhu rules as well.

Spoilers for the campaign to follow.

Hello everyone,

I was a subscriber to the AP line when Strange Aeons initially came out and I started running it very quickly. My group got almost through book 3 (we are about to get their memories back) and we have taken a VERY long hiatus - roughly 5 years.

My players highly prioritize RP and have been incredibly cool and trusting with the amnesia factor for their characters. We move through campaigns incredibly slowly, even playing 4hrs per week. (For example, it took us 30 sessions to complete Book 1 of Curse of the Crimson Throne!)

The players are looking forward to returning and finishing the AP, making it the second campaign we will ever finish.

Now, even when I was running Strange Aeons in 2016/2017 and reading people's criticisms of the AP now that people have gotten to finish it for the past several years, I know there is some changes I would like to make going forward.

A lot of the issues I have seen stem with some tonal weirdness in Book 4, some plot points feeling a little odd or disheartening (ex. completing the Mysterium and missing Lowls yet again, only to be told you can research there instead, the Necronomicon being a let down), and the final boss feeling underwhelming or like they came out of left field.

Here are the things I am looking at accomplishing:

1) Trimming the AP. I want to cut some content to keep the campaign focused on the horror/weird fiction elements. We progress very slowly, and I want this to move at a decent clip if possible, thus cutting content. I am guaranteed going to be cutting the gnoll stuff in Book 4.

Any recommendations for streamlining or shortening the game without missing out on any fun set pieces?

2) I really like the idea of the group traveling to the "real world" at some point and running with Call of Cthulhu rules for several sessions. I think that would be a really wacky way to keep the adventure feeling fresh. This could be a fun way to link together any missing elements that I might lose by trimming the campaign.

3) Making the end boss more satisfying. I've read a lot of threads in here so I've seen what other people have suggested of making the last fight be Lowls, etc. But I figured I'd post about it again here.

I don't have any ideas set in stone, so I'm looking to bounce some ideas off people for what they did to mitigate any of these issues, or what they would recommend.

I am comfortable with tweaking APs. One of the big changes that has already happened in our game is that I allowed the ritual at the end of Book 2 to be successful - which the players unknowingly contributed to despite the fight being won. They rushed outside of Iris Hill in time to see Thrushmoor being taken away, and it's one of their highlights of any session we've ever played.

Thanks in advance!

I am most looking forward to the Lost Omens line at this point. The setting is so vibrant and bursting with plot hooks, inspiration, character seeds and options...

The Lost Omens books I'd like to see most are:
Tian Xia
Arcadia
Eye of Dread (I want something with more Ustalav!)

I'm unsure if Lost Omens would be the correct line to host a Darklands book, but I feel it would work better as a pseudo-monster book a la Book of the Dead. If Paizo would be interested in revisiting any of their old Adventure Paths Second Darkness getting touched up to be released in tandem would be very cool. Also extremely unlikely!

A book covering more "generic" NPCs such as those in the Gamemastery Guide.

Several years down the line we'll likely need more options for the newer Ancestries with less feat choice.

I would love an Adventure Path that has a heavy focus on the religion of Pathfinder. We often see cultists to evil deities, or ally with churches of good deities for healing or removing disease. I think an Adventure Path with the expectation of players being very devoted to their deities the same way Strength of Thousands has the expectation of players being spellcasters could be cool. It would likely lean more into plane-hopping than the typical AP. VERY niche and probably too open-ended even if you forced players to be limited to the good/neutral main pantheon. But we're all dreaming big here, right?

Hello everyone.

I am an exceedingly infrequent lurker and even rarer poster to these forums.

I've decided to run Curse of the Crimson Throne in Pathfinder 2e. It will be my first time running in 2e and I'm very excited for it!

This is for me to get my thoughts out, as well as perhaps get some insight from anyone who's offering. I've ran all of Rise of the Runelords and 1/2 of Strange Aeons for this group, so we are well-versed in playing together and prioritize roleplay and character over combat. In the past I haven't done much to tweak any AP to suit my party better, but in this case I will be.

To prepare, I've read about half of the adventure and much of the back matter in the Anniversary Edition and have spent some time perusing the forums here.

We had character creation last week, and everyone seems to be settling into a similar kind of niche organically. All but one of the characters have some influence of death/undeath around them, and the odd one out is periphery to that. Here is what my starting party will be:

-Maeve, a human/changeling sorcerer with the undead bloodline. An... interesting mixture to be sure. She is unaware of her heritage and wants to learn more about it over the course of the campaign.
-Unnamed as of now, a half-elf oracle of lore. The eldest of 3 triplets who all are saddled with the blessing and curse of oracular powers. Grew up in Ustalav and moved to Korvosa. Don't have a lot of detail about this character yet.
-Unnamed as of now, elf duskwalker rogue. This is where things get wild. This player wants their character to have been a part of a noble house of Korvosa who have ties to the Church of Pharasma. Before the events of EoA, her house falls and she doesn't know who is responsible.
-Lawrence (or maybe Ludwig) human dhampir monk. This character is tied to the previous one and are creating the backstory together. This is the servant of the duskwalker.

With a character wanting to play in an invented noble house with a mystery baked in and ready to go I have a lot of options from the get-go. With what my players have done and talked to me about, they are very much looking forward to intrigue in the campaign so I think that side of the campaign needs to be buffed up.

This noble house will be a minor one, of course and will have ties with the Grand Cathedral of Pharasma. I think it will be located in or very close to The Grey District. The PC duskwalker was created from one of their ancestors. The members of the house are killed, perhaps while the PC is away with her servant - which means I need to decide who-dunnit and why. My current thought is perhaps this is the first move before the events of Seven Days to the Grave to ensure less help and monetary assistance can go towards stemming the blood veil.

I will need more interaction from the noble houses to assist with this subplot as well as to maybe keep the trail off Illeosa for a book or two. (Plus, the players want intrigue and perhaps houses vying for control of the Crimson Throne!) I'm also considering her maybe not being responsible for either the murder of Eodred or the blood veil.

I am already planning on making some tweaks to the beginning of the campaign so that they don't kill Lamm right away which will serve the dual purpose of spending some time in Korvosa before the riots start, and possibly meeting Eodred before he passes away. The assassination of a noble house over night followed shortly after by the death of the king means that riots starting quickly will probably be less jarring.

If the Nightgaunt was able to kidnap one of my players I was maybe thinking of having that player come back as a doppleganger later on, allowing the player to play as the doppleganger for a while(just letting him use the stats of his normal character plus the doppleganger abilities) before his real character would be found somewhere in the asylum maybe babbling to himself about the horrors he saw out in the fog. The characters reappearance would be left unexplained.

Okay. I will definitely be lifting this idea to an extent as one of my players fell victim to the nightgaunt.

Specifically, he wandered off by himself when the rest of the party returned to the chapel and entered the courtyard all by himself. He was lifted away, and struggled, but ultimately couldn't break free. Carried up, up, up into the sickly yellow fog. And then I called the game since the timing was just right. He is working on a new character to rejoin the party in the next session.

I'm one of those GMs who doesn't like killing characters. My players get very attached to their characters, and dislike the character creation process outside of brainstorming and creating a personality and backstory. (Yes, I have killed characters before. Brutally, in the case of our Rise of the Runelords game.) If deaths happen, I want them to feel meaningful, or fit within the confines of the narrative. This character disappearing without his companions having a chance of ever knowing what happened is a brilliant way for a character to go; thematically it's perfect.

And yet.

The amnesia angle is a pretty important unifying feature for the party and seeking revenge later on is a strong drive to continue the story, and not having a PC with that link has potential for some interesting inner-party dynamics, but ultimately ruins some of the narrative behind Strange Aeons. Ideally, I'd like to have the original characters stick together until the 4th adventure.

So, I'm thinking of having the nightgaunt drop off the character somewhere else in the asylum, and be found by the players at a later point. If I can manage it, his reveal will be at the end of a session. Afterwards, I will tell the player who originally played him decide if he wants to return to that character, or stick with the new one.

There is an amount of player agency that is innately taken away when they don't have direct control over a portion of their background. The amount the PCs cannot remember is variable. I believe it's said "no less than two years but not more than 5" cannot be remembered from their fugue state/amnesia.

Everything else is very much GMs fiat. I allowed my players to create their backgrounds except for the past 5 years of their lives. I told them during this time, they can't remember anything but they will recover those memories in time. I told them they may not like some of the things they did, and if they're not okay with that to communicate with me.

You can have it be that the players remember their pasts except for a small chunk, or like me, that they woke up in Briarstone unable to remember anything. Not even their names.

Even the events that occurred during those forgotten years can be changed to more suit your PCs. If you want to really fiddle with that, most of the work will most likely be done during Book 2, in which they encounter some NPCs who have...mixed opinions of them. :)

I know there have been a good handful, and not all of them are in Pathfinder necessarily.

In our Rise of the Runelords game, Aldern was subsequently named Mr. Fancypants.

Also, our players love to nickname the players, mostly to their chagrin. Our half elf cleric is named Nora, so after they visited the Hagfish, and met the barkeeps own Norah... "Don't you dare start calling me a hagfish!"

Shalelu was too hard to be remembered, so they called her "Sha-nay-nay" and "Sha-le-lu-le-lo" but spelled her name differently every time on the initiative chart. (They had an easier time with Malfeshkenor.)

Outside of Rise of the Runelords in our World of Darkness games. One of the PCs was named Cam, but one of the others immediately started calling her "Cambles".

One of the characters was attacked at his college campus, and his friends heard his cries for help and all decided to help him. Unfortunately, the person who had attacked him was actually a giant snake in disguise, and they didn't stand a chance. The first person who got truly hurt in combat was poisoned by the snake, and he stumbled into a corner and made his saving throw every turn as all the other friends fell. When the PC managed to kill the snake and rush to his friends' side, he finally failed his roll and died. Everyone at the table was very upset, and started lamenting, "Friend number 1! Why? He was the cool one. He wore the leather jacket!"

But the most ridiculous of all, was when they fought against a giant spirit, who was in the form of a rusty tank with blood oozing from the rivets. I had an actual name but it's been lost because what the players named him easily overrides my memory. They were so certain they were going to get killed, one of the players wrote on the white board we used to use as a gaming mat, "Rape Hungy". They ran away after a few rounds, but Rapehungy is immortal to this day at the gaming table.